66 CHAPTER THREE
world. Joel Kraemer has forcefully argued for a substantial infl uence of
Muslim law (fi qh) on Maimonides. Kraemer’s claim is based on the ex-
amination of a wide body of Muslim legal texts, from the East and West
of the Islamic world.^60 A similar argument has been made by Gideon Lib-
son, who has noted parallels to Maimonides’ legal terminology and rul-
ings in the writings of all Muslim legal schools: Shafiites in par ticular, but
alsoHanafi tes, and even Malikites.^61
Blidstein is undoubtedly right in arguing that Gaonic literature in gen-
eral and the North- African Gaonic tradition in par ticular formed the
basis for Maimonides’ legal thought. To the extent that this Gaonic tra-
dition, in Judaeo-Arabic as well as in Hebrew, was infl uenced by contem-
porary Muslim thought, dating from the formative period of Islamic law,
this, too, fed into Maimonides’s thought, and one should not be surprised
to detect in his writings parallels and similarities to it. These early con-
tacts in the formative period do not, however, exclude the possibility, in-
deed the probability, of continuous infl uences, resulting from the contacts
of Jews with their contemporary Muslim neighbors. We must therefore
keep our ears cocked for echoes of Maimonides’ immediate Muslim en-
vironment in his legal rulings.
One particularly telling example of such an echo, which has hitherto
remained unnoticed, can be seen in Maimonides’ decree in a case of mat-
rimonial discord. A man complained that his wife, having raised a very
large family, refused to sleep with him, an accusation that the wife de-
nied. Maimonides ruled that reliable persons (qawm mawthuqun), who
can deduce from the couple’s behavior what the situation really is, should
move in with the couple. These persons would then be able to determine
whether the wife is guilty of neglecting her marital obligations, in which
case she could be divorced without her muakhkhar.^62 This ruling, which
has no pre cedence in Jewish law, seems to refl ect a peculiar interpreta-
tion of Maliki law, which was typically practiced in al- Andalus.^63 Ac-
cording to this practice, couples with marital problems were either sent
to the house of a trustworthy person (dar amin), or the amin was lodged
(^60) J. Kraemer, “The Infl uence of Islamic Law on Maimonides: The Case of the Five Qualifi -
cations,” Teudah 10 (1996): 225– 44 [Hebrew].
(^61) G. Libson, “Interaction between Islamic Law and Jewish Law during the Middle Ages,”
in E. I. Cuomo, ed., Law in Multicultural Societies: Proceedings of the International Asso-
ciation of Law Libraries (Jerusalem, July 21– 26, 1985) (Jerusalem, 1989), 96, 98.
(^62) Responsa, 40– 41. On the muakhkhar—the late installation of the wedding gift— see
chap. 4, note 142, below.
(^63) See M. Fierro, “Ill- Treated Women Seeking Divorce: The Quranic Two Arbiters and Ju-
dicial Practice Among the Malikis in al- Andalus and North Africa,” in M. Kh. Masud,
R. Peters, and D. Powers, eds., Dispensing Justice in Islam: Qadis and their Judgement
(Leiden and Boston, 2006), 323– 47, esp. 331– 35.